Chicken wire compost bin set up with minimal injury!

Because the worms just can't keep up, I have set up a normal compost bin, too. I was hoping to buy a nice rotating one. Then I checked out prices. Wow! It just seems nutty to spend >$100 on a composting bin. That's hardly crunchy, right? And the only compost bin Home Depot had in stock was a $300 cedar number. Ugh!

However, Home Depot did have chicken wire -- and lots of it. They must have had a dozen different varieties! I scratched myself pretty badly checking them out. I guess I should have remembered that chicken wire is in essence mildly barbed wire. In any case, I found what I was looking for in a 3' by 10' affair. It came tied up in wire that I reused as wire ties.

So I have finished building my own bin using these materials. I found about six sets of directions online, all of them remarkably similar. Here is an example: http://www.urbanfoodgarden.org/main/composting/composting---wire-compost-bins.htm.

And here is a picture of the finished product! I am quite pleased with it. I put some dirt at the bottom (including a nice fat earthworm), some food scraps, and some of the grass that has overgrown my front beds.

"You didn't vermicompost in Cambridge, did you?"

I've been vermicomposting (composting with worms) since this past December, but I've only just begun to harvest my vermicompost. What does that mean? It means to collect the products of vermicomposting, which are worm poop, worm poop, and worm poop. Here is what worm poop looks like:

I began with fewer than a dozen worms, which came courtesy of a the very nice director of recycling in Cambridge. In the course of vermicomposting, I think I have seen about a thousand. When I close my eyes sometimes I see worms. Big fat worms, middling worms, baby worms, and worm eggs. The worm eggs scare me most. They are supposed to contain 2-10 worms each.

I am going to have to get even better at identifying worm food. For example, I often forget to save coffee grinds and tea bags. Better stop that, or else the worms will come knocking on the door.

In the meantime, I have posted on craiglist an offer for free worm starter kits. Three people got in touch to take me up on the offer overnight! We'll see how many come through. Here is the listing: http://nh.craigslist.org/zip/765935982.html.

Some of the folks who responded to my add on craiglist asked more about my setup. I told them:


I'd be happy to tell you a bit more about my setup. It is very simple! I have a large Rubbermaid storage bin that I purchased at Home Depot. I then drilled about two dozen air holes in the top using a normal power drill (you could do the same using a hammer and nail if you don't have a power drill).

Within the bin I have bedding of shredded newspaper I have wet and then wrung out. Within this bedding I bury food scraps. The frequency at which I add food scraps has increased as the worms have multiplied; it started out being once a month and is now more like once a week.

There are lots of resources online that provide additional information on home vermicomposting. I am really quite an amateur!


I have done two harvesting sessions of two hours each following the advice I've followed online, but I still have a lot of poop to pour through. I've made a dent, though, as you can see. The "finished product" is obviously the brown stuff at the bottom of the image. The stuff at the top is the fresh newspaper bedding with food scraps buried in it.